Biden and Harris will meet with the King family on the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet with the family of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for a memorial service Monday. 60th Anniversary of the March on WashingtonWhere the king delivered his famous book Speech “I have a dream.” at the Lincoln Memorial.

White House officials said all of King’s children have been invited.

The Democratic president has taken a page from history by opening the Oval Office to the King family. On August 28, 1963, the day of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, President John F. Kennedy welcomed King and other key march organizers to the Oval Office for a meeting.

The White House did not include the meeting on Biden’s public schedule for Monday.

Biden was also hosting a reception Monday night to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonpartisan, nonprofit legal organization founded at Kennedy’s request to help advocate for racial justice.

In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Biden said the administration is promoting King’s dream of a society where personality outweighs skin color.

Through key legislation and executive orders, he wrote, “we are advancing fairness in everything we do by making unprecedented investments across America, including in Black Americans.”

Biden said his policies have led to lower black unemployment, more small businesses started by black entrepreneurs, and more black families covered by health insurance.

He has given about $7 billion to a network of historically black colleges and universities and has emphasized black appointments to his cabinet and White House staff, and throughout the federal judiciary and independent agencies like the Federal Reserve.

“For generations, Black Americans have not been fully integrated into our democracy or economy, but with their courage and pure heart, they have never given up in pursuit of the American Dream,” Biden wrote.

He also referred to the racist attack Saturday at a store in Jacksonville, Florida, in which three black people were shot dead by a white man wearing a mask and shooting a weapon with a swastika. The shooter, who also posted racist graffiti, killed himself.

“We must refuse to live in a country where black families go to the store or black students go to school in fear of being shot for the color of their skin,” Biden wrote. On this Memorial Day, let us continue to show that racial equality is not an aspiration. We must reject the narrow view that America is a zero-sum game, that for one side to succeed the other must fail. Let us remember that America is so great. It is enough for everyone to do well and reach their God-given potential.

The 1963 March on Washington is still being considered One of the greatest and most important demonstrations of racial justice in US history.

the Nonviolent protest It drew as many as 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial and provided the impetus for Congress to pass landmark civil rights and voting rights legislation in the years that followed. King was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

On Saturday, thousands gathered on the National Mall to commemorate the 60th anniversary, as speakers and others said the country still riven by racial inequality has yet to fulfill King’s dream of a colorblind society where his four children are not judged “by color.” out of their skin but through the content of their personality.

The event was organized by the King family’s Drum Major Institute and the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.